Season 5 Episode 44

Tue, 3 Feb 2015 10:00pm

“The main reason we started the strike it was because at that stage it was very, very, very difficult living on the farms, struggling on the farms with a R69…..R69 means living from hand to mouth. We couldn’t eat proper, we couldn’t even send our children to school proper”

Two years ago the farmlands of the Western Cape were hit by a series of strikes. Farm workers demanded a pay increase; from a laughable R69 a day to the more reasonable – but still absurd – R100 a day. The strike was led by five female farm workers from De Doorns; a small town in the Cape Winelands District. Dubbed ‘The Big Five’, these lionhearted women talk about their struggle to secure a liveable wage and better working conditions for themselves and their co-workers.